India will become the nation with the most people in less than 15 years

India is poised to become the world’s most populous country six years earlier than expected, according to revised population projections released Wednesday by the United Nations.

A new report by the population division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs says China and India have about 1.38 billion and 1.31 billion people, respectively. After 2022, when both are expected to have about 1.4 billion, India’s population will continue rising and China’s will “remain fairly constant” until the 2030s, at which point it will begin to “slightly decrease.”

That will occur six years earlier than the organization projected two years ago, when it acknowledged 2028 as the year India would likely pass China. India, which accounts for 18 percent of the world’s population, is projected to reach 1.5 billion people in 2030 and 1.7 billion in 2050….